Why Won’t God Just Take This Away?

For the director of music. A psalm of David.
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall (Psalms 13:1-4, NIV).

“Why won’t God just answer my prayers and take this ___ away?”

For whatever reason, over the past several years God has been putting me into relationships with people who are struggling with issues that lead to that place; that place where one wonders why God does not move His mighty hand to save. That place that silently screams into our minds, “If God cares so much, why does He do so little?”

Why indeed. I have much sympathy for such pleas. For the last two years, one of my daughters has been locked in a great battle with depression. Not the “what a miserable day I am having” variety which all of us have from time to time, but a deeper and more terrible kind.
The kind that makes you feel that you are lost in a dark, murky, cold nowhere…
where the only certainties seem to be:
that you are alone,
that no one cares,
that you are ugly and broken,
and that God cares not.
The kind of menacing Dark that urges you
to hurt yourself,
to loathe your life,
and to focus on ending it to escape.

She is eleven.
When this goes on for years, how can you not ask the question, “why does God leave me here?”

How do you deal with that? How do you relate to and love someone who is feeling that God has failed them, who balks at the offer of prayer, and who is angry at God for allowing a suffering to go on and on and on with no discernable cause, and for which there seems no redeeming value?

In my own experience, I have often found that reciting God’s promises to help, heal, and save do little. In fact, at times it seems doing so makes things worse. Not because they are untrue, but because the person is not in a place where he or she can hear them.

What I have been learning is that the problem is often not an ignorance of God’s promises or that the person needs reminded of them, but that they fly in the face of what is going on in their personal experience. They want to believe it, they are told to believe it, but it is not currently their reality. Creed is trumped by experience.

When the facts of our experience don’t fit into the box of our theological worldview things get messy; and the more they defy fitting into the confines of it, the more we start to question the truth of what we know about God and life. Our pain is exacerbated when we cannot find a way for our creed to line up with our experience.

What I have been learning is that there are some experiences in life that will rip holes deep into the hull of your theology, and no matter how hard we work to patch, repair, or reinforce it, the reality of our experience floods in and we find the boat of our theology/creed/doctrine unable to keep from taking on water.

The fact is that one’s biblical knowledge, creed, doctrine, and theology are not enough. I am not saying they are useless, I am simply saying that they are not enough. If knowledge of Scripture promises and good theology were enough to help us, God would have been content to give us a book. Yes, He gave us a book, but He went far beyond that. He revealed Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ. We are rational beings, yes; but we are also relational beings. We are rational so that we can be relational. We need more than true propositions, we need The Person behind them.

What I have been learning is that as important as knowing the truth is, it is more important to know how to incarnate it. The same Spirit who was in Christ is in all of us who are in Christ. When Jesus told His original disciples that it was better for them if He left, He was meant it. Because He left, we Have His Spirit living in us. He is more intimately with us now than He was with Peter, James, or John. Because His Spirit is in us, we can incarnate His love and care to whoever.

Jesus gave us His Spirit for more than our private good. He gave it to us so that He could work with us and through us to bring His love, mercy, and grace to any who need it. This is the miracle and mystery of it: that the Father has given us the Spirit of Christ to bring the reality and the experience of the love of Christ to others through us. Our own deliberate, hands on, expectation free giving of Christ’s love to hurting people is one of the most powerful and intimate ways that God works in us. Could He do it Himself? Yes. And indeed He does. But more often than we think, the way He brings His love and healing and comfort is through us.

Do that this way:
Be with them.
Let them know that you know they are not okay,
and tell them that it is okay not to be okay.
Let them cry and vent. Help them find the words to express what they are feeling, what questions they have, what doubts they are struggling with.
Don’t try to fix the pain. Acknowledge the pain.
Don’t balk at their questions and doubts. Affirm that you hear what they are.
Let them grieve.
Tell them you will stay with them, that you will walk with them, that you will not leave them alone, and that they do not need to face it alone.
Pray with them if they will let you, but don’t be put off if they will not. You can pray silently with them anyway and intercede for them when you are away.
Do not be surprised by the Dark you see, or pain they feel, or the doubts they have. Don’t deny it or downplay it or rationalize it.

What you see and hear may be angry, confusing, or hurtful. But:
Be gentle.
Be kind.
Be compassionate.
Be forgiving.
Don’t feel that you have to say anything. Sometimes presence speaks more to the soul than words.
Pray for discernment that you may know what to say, and for discretion so that you know what not to say.
Let them know by your words and actions that they do not need to earn your love, care, and help, not do they need to worry about losing it by what they say or do. You are committed to them because of who they are not because of what they do or don’t do.

My daughter’s depression is beyond my ability to heal. I don’t have the answers for it. I don’t know why God doesn’t just take it away. I have seen Him heal others. I don’t know why He doesn’t do it for her. I know He could. I just know that after two years He hasn’t. All her mother and I know is that we are not enough. We are learning to trust God when there are no easy answers, when there are no clear explanations. When she asks why God is not taking it away I have no answers. All I can say is that I know God well enough to trust Him even when I don’t see any clear way to go. All I can do is love her with the love Christ has given me as best I can, and trust that God will work things out. That is what it means to be learning to live by faith and not by sight. Coming to that place where you can embrace the fact that you do not have the answers, but it is okay because You know Who does…even though He is keeping them to Himself.